The Past and Future of Lipidomics Bioinformatics

This chapter presents the Lipidomics Informatics for Life-Science workflow, which consists of multiple modules for targeted and untargeted computational lipid analyses in mass spectrometry. The modules cover assay design, raw data analysis, standardization of results, visualization, data storage, enrichment, and data integration. We highlight and discuss the importance of standardized data formats, the use of common nomenclature, and the necessity for minimum reporting guidelines to enable high-throughput lipidomics applications with, but not limited to, our workflow. Finally, we identify and discuss shortcomings of current lipidomics databases as well as data integration tools and describe potential strategies to support more explorative and hypothesis-driven research to enable the development of next-generation lipidomics tools and workflows.